Rep. Trent Franks: Obama wants to “decimate the national security apparatus”

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Frank Gaffney: It is a great privilege to have an opportunity to talk with, from time to time, a man I consider to be at the forefront of the fight for the free world in the United States Congress. He is the Representative of the people of the 8^th District of Arizona, Congressman Trent Franks. He is a Senior Member of the House Armed Services Committee. He serves on several of its important subcommittees including one on Emerging Threats and also Strategic Forces. He is also the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Key positions all and it’s always a delight to have a chance to visit with him, Congressman welcome back to Secure Freedom Radio.

Rep. Trent Franks: Always appreciate being with you Frank.

FG: I guess I have to ask first and foremost you’re in the midst as we’re speaking of a decision about who will be the nominee to be the next Speaker of the House. This program will air after that decision is made by the caucus. I just wondered if you had any thoughts that you’d like to share with us on the stakes and your attitude?

TF: Just as you may know, I’m a member of the House Freedom Caucus and we’ve taken a position to back Daniel Webster for that, even though I’m just being very direct and time will tell that when people hear this they’ll know whether I was correct or not, but I think it’s going to be very difficult for Daniel to prevail. The bigger question here is what we can do to change the process going forward, and that’s one of the main strategies here at the House Freedom Caucus, and I’m hoping that if Mr. McCarthy is the Speaker and I think it looks like he will be, but time as you know is a strange thing predictions are always unwise, but here’s the bottom line Frank. The reason that we’re even having leadership fights here is because the House leadership has appeared to be weak to the base, to the people out there that care about national security, about constitutional sanctity, and all the things that really matter, and there’s a great elephant in the room that everybody is overlooking and that is the Senate filibuster. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to allow anything to proceed and that means we have to have six Democrats to help us to be able to debate or vote on anything of consequence in the Senate, and the Democrats in the Senate have become so polarized and so antithetical to everything reasonable that they won’t give us those six votes, and so consequently (inaudible), and what happens then if you look at the record of the House, we pass everything that any conservative base member would suggest is even reasonable. We’ve done a very good job in the House, we’ve won the day, only to see every bill of consequence go over there and stop them before it’s even debated in the Senate, and if we don’t elevate this filibuster abuse by the Democrats to a political profile that will help the people out there understand what the real problem is in Congress. We’re going to continue to repeat this stalemate and this malaise that is making the base so angry time and time again.

FG: We’ll be following both election closely and your efforts on that score Congressman Trent Franks. Let me turn to one piece of legislation that has now been approved by both the House and Senate, it’s the National Defense Authorization Act. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee you’ve been very directly involved in that. The President is threatening to veto over both a financing issue and also apparently the provision in there prohibiting the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Congressman let me ask you why this legislation is important as you see it?

TF: Well first Frank you know the NDAA is the main defense authorization bill for the nation and the first constitutional priority of any governance really, but certainly the United States government as outlined in our own Constitution is the protection of the nation, the national security of the United States of America, and it is astonishing to me that the Commander in Chief in the White House seems to see that as sort of a casual ‘well we’ll get to it when we can’ kind of issue, and the notion that he is going to veto a NDAA bill, that coincidently this type of defense bill has passed a Congress, I think for the last 53 or 54 years in a row, so now he’s going to veto it, because it has a little bit more money in it than he wants it to have for national security. Now there are some other issues that he has, but let me just suggest to you back when we were voting on the sequester there were tremendous pressures put on people like me, because I am a fiscal conservative to say you got to vote for this sequester process, because in another (inaudible) case, and I said ‘I’m afraid it will, and I’m going to vote no’, boy I mean the pressure was enormous, but I voted no and they said ‘why, you know it will never go into effect. The sequester is just too draconian to the defense to ever go into effect’. I said ‘you forget that this President has wanted to decimate the national security apparatus in this country, raise taxes, and blame it on Republican since he’s been in diapers’, and that was my quote at the time, and of course unfortunately that occurred. He did make the sequester occur and now we’ve had a tremendous shift on our national security not only our funding, but the way it is transferring very quickly into capability, and he is vacillating and projecting weakness all over the world and it represents a profound danger to this country.

FG: I couldn’t agree with you more and this legislation will I hope make a contribution to righting the ship. There are a number of provisions as Daniel Horowitz points out, and we’ll be talking with him momentarily about it, that one might have sought in such legislation and you’ve described a little bit about your difficulties getting anything done with the Senate, but could you talk about for example whether it is advisable for the Congress not be supporting the United States Marine Corps, for example, in its finding, that actually putting women into ground combat positions is deleterious to those units and to the mission that they are being asked to perform. Should that not have been something that was addressed in, and preferably prohibited, by this legislation?

TF: Well you know my position on that is yes. I absolutely believe that women can perform an enormous array of capabilities for both military and every function. The capability there is completely equal but different, and the Marines traditionally have had a very simple policy. If people could survive the rigors of their training then they were allowed to be in the Marines, and we have seen this President try to make the military a social experiment, and I just have to say to you with every difference in my heart toward everyone, the military apparatus (inaudible), crassly but very accurately, is to kill people and break their stuff. It is to win wars, it is to prevail on the battlefield, and that should be the singular focus of military policy when it comes to what policies we have. This is not an area where we experiment with new social experimental ideas, and I’m just convinced that this President and his policies has weakened the military on every front. Now the good news, I don’t want to shift gears on you, but the good news is I did have three amendments that went into the NDAA that I think are of great consequence. One, we were able to reinstitute the EMP Commission. Now I don’t known what will happen after this President if he does follow through this veto threat, there might be some sort of negotiation, and that may be a casualty, but only time will tell, but we also got an amendment that I offered that will give us a test bid to begin to plan a state based missile defense capability, and then also I had amendment to place direct military aid to the Kurds to help them fight ISIS; and just finally, I know everybody is aware of what just happened with the Iran deal. The great danger right now to Israel, to the world in many aspects is the capability of Iran to become a nuclear-armed nation, and this administration has facilitated that.

FG: We have to let you go. This is an incredibly important point and I think your efforts in particular to address the existential thereat to our country that could arise from a nuclear armed Iran wielding an electromagnetic pulse weapon and attack against this country is extraordinarily important, and your efforts to get this EMP Threat Commission re-established is extraordinarily commendable and whatever other defects the NDAA may I have I hope that very important contribution will survive what comes next with the President, and we thank you for your leadership on that and so many other things.